The Friends of Lac des Roches and Birch Lake are celebrating the dissolution of the Crown corporation behind a contentious local development project. Land and Water BC (LWBC) is no more.
“It has been announced that this Crown corporation of the provincial government was dissolved after a three-year life span,” Bill Jollymore, the group’s media co-ordinator, wrote in a letter to the Free Press. “Controversy over the disposal of land and water rights, tensions among ministries and agencies with independent mandates, over aggressiveness in their selling of Crown land and problems with First Nation’s rights and claims apparently contributed to their death knell.”
The Friends formed last August in response to a proposed project that could have seen 98 additional properties built on Lac des Roches, 130 at Birch Lake and 61 at Montana Lake. A hotel and golf course were also planned. The group opposed the scope of LWBC’s plan for the area and the potential ensuing environmental harm.
Following the May 2005 provincial election, Premier Gordon Campbell announced the results of a cabinet shuffle that saw a number of changes to the government. These included the re-instatement of the Ministry of Environment, and the establishment of the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands. Another change resulting from the re-organization was the dissolve of LWBC, the mandate of which was divided among the newly formed ministries of Agriculture and Lands, and Environment.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Lands is responding to calls made to LWBC. Liz Bicknell, the ministry’s director of Communication, told the Free Press not to expect a decision on the future of the Lac des Roches project until the end of July.
“What I can tell you is no decisions have been made with respect to that development,” she said.
“When there’s change, there always takes some time to finalize it.”
The Friends are taking the news of LWBC’s dissolve as a victory.
“As a resulf of losing so many seats in the Interior, especially in areas where they were pushing for the sale of Crown land to developers, (the Liberal government) lost almost every riding they tried to pull that off on,” Gordon Marshall, a Friends member, said. “It’s been a sore point so they squashed it and they want it to be kept fairly quiet rather than say ‘hey, we made a mistake’. I think what will happen, in my opinion, is they’ll probably slow down in their approach of selling off Crown land to developers.”
While the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands was unable to provide any specifics behind LWBC’s demise, like Marshall, Ed Jewer, a Vancouver Island opponent of LWBC, surmised it had something to do with the Crown corporation’s aggressive mandate.
“I think it is an admission that they weren’t operating fairly, and I think they upset a lot of people in a lot of different areas, even within the government,” said Jewer.
Andrew Gage, a lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law, said LWBC began as the Whistler Land Corp., which in 1983 oversaw the development and marketing of Crown land in the Village of Whistler. In 1997 the provincial government expanded the mandate of the Whistler Land Corp., around the same time the company changed its name to the BC Assets and Land Corp, (BCAL). In 2002 BCAL became LWBC and its mandate changed.
“With BCAL, the idea was that whenever they wanted to sell surplus land that they really should have someone there to aggressively market it and make sure the public gets the best return for their money,” said Gage in a March 2005 interview with the Free Press. “The big difference between BCAL and LWBC, there are probably a few differences, but I think the most significant one is they were really there to market surplus lands. What LWBC has effectively done is declared anything that they aren’t restricted under the Lands Act form selling – which is almost everything – open for business.”
LWBC had a mandate to maximize the government revenue from public lands. In turn, LWBC received a percentage of sales. Gage is cautious in how he regards the recent news.
“One hopes that this is only part of a broader recognition that LWBC was just too aggressive in the way they were selling public lands” Gage said. “If it’s not, it’s largely a symbolic victory. Hopefully it is part of something larger but I haven’t got a sense of that yet.”
For Cariboo South MLA Charlie Wyse this represents an attempt by the Liberal government to right some of the wrongs the government made in its first term.
“I am pleased to see the Liberals have recognized their error in their first term of office and are finally getting around to re-establish the Ministry of Environment with all those responsibilities that go along with it,” he commented. “Their attempt at privatization through Land and Water, it just hasn’t been successful, and this situation down in Lac des Roches, they just furthered questions around what the Liberals were doing.”
Friends Chair Barry Reid said the group would not have made a commotion if LWBC’s proposal was in reason.
“Our feeling, overall, is that we’re not opposed to stuff happening on the lake,” Reid said. “It’s not like we’re saying ‘no, we live here, we like it and we don’t want it to change’. We know development is going to occur on this lake, and we’re not opposed to recreational stuff happening. But a 228 unit strata subdivision? And they’re claiming this is going to be a year-round development. And you’ve got to ask yourself why people already here don’t live here year-round. It’s because of the weather and the distance from where things are.”